


King and Lionheart

by evocates



Category: Actor RPF, British Actor RPF, Lord of the Rings RPF
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-29
Updated: 2013-03-29
Packaged: 2017-12-06 20:44:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,816
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/739972
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/evocates/pseuds/evocates
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>And in the sea that's painted black, / Creatures lurk below the deck / But you're the king and I'm a lionheart.</i> Sean has left. Viggo sits on the beach between two sunrises.</p>
            </blockquote>





	King and Lionheart

**Author's Note:**

  * For [noalinnea](https://archiveofourown.org/users/noalinnea/gifts).



> Written during a period of depression in the middle of the night, with [King and Lionheart](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5AiSrCPvpco) by Of Monsters and Men on repeat. 
> 
> For Noalinnea, because she very patiently waited for me as I suddenly started writing this in our IM window.

The sea is dark, so very dark, and the night is silent. Blackness swallows up the sky, and the edges of it melts into the water until Viggo isn't sure whether the boundaries of the world still exist. Grey and black surrounds him; the white of his t-shirt is a sad, faded thing in the lack of light. His fingers itch for his camera, sitting calmly by his side. There is light there, he knows, from the simple press of the finger, but it is not what he hungers for. It will not soothe the ache in his heart.

Water laps at his bare feet. He has forgotten his shoes again, left them in the car, he thinks. The wind howls around him, and Viggo can almost, _almost_ believe that there is a voice there. A soft laugh, familiar and deep, the sound wound tight around his spine, and the teasing words - ritual by now - that berate him for forgetting his shoes and being a terrible adult.

Echoes.

He remembers the legend of the poor nymph, stuck inside a cave. The myth tells how she falls for Narcissus's beauty at first sight, but Viggo thinks that Narcissus must have had blond hair, because it was surely dark, so very dark, inside that cave.

Anyone surrounded by suffocating darkness will fall for the first ray of light that falls their way.

His voice is hoarse inside him. His breath seems to rattle. He opens his hand and clutches at a handful of sand. In his poet's heart, it is easy to think of this as a metaphor. A cliché one, but clichés sometimes fit, and Viggo is far too tired of think of something new. He lets the sand fall from his fingers. 

The tide comes in and licks his skin clean. The water is cold.

Sean left with the sunrise. The airport is in the middle of the city. It is lucky that they are at Auckland right now, right where the runway stretches out long enough that Sean doesn't have an extra layover before he can reach home. They already have more time than they should have. Viggo feels time as if his body is an hourglass, grains of sand (here is the cliché again, and it fits terribly well) falling. Not only passing, but passing from one hand to another. There's a vague guilt inside him, for every second he has of Sean is a second he takes away from Sean's daughters, from the girls he so loves.

But Viggo looks out to the black skies and the black seas and all he wants is the sun. Sometimes he thinks it will be good to be a child again, so he can grab for what he wants with both hands and never let go. So he will not have responsibilities, and the hourglass inside him does not feel like it is emptying, all time stolen from him.

He thinks he should blame Sean for this, for teaching him to fear time. (No, he can't.)

The phone rings.

His fingers trawl through the sand as he looks for his cellphone. (He doesn't used to have one. Not before Sean. There's a part of him that always struggles when he has to go against his principles, against the set ways he has for doing things, but somehow, having Sean's voice next to his ear is far more important than... than... he can't even remember why he used to not have a cellphone.)

“Hello?”

“Hey, Vig.”

Viggo's breathing trips. He licks his lips, frees the air from his palate. “You can't be home yet,” he says, and winces at the near-accusing tone of his voice.

“I'm in Hong Kong. Layovers and such things.” Sean paused. “I'm sorry, I should've called earlier. I just found a convenient chair and fell asleep on it. It's your fault, you know?”

“It is?” (It's so easy, to fall back into banter.)

In front of him, the skies start to lighten. Has he really been here for so long?

“Aye, you kept me awake and everything.”

“I'm not sorry.”

“Neither am I. Not this part anyway.” 

He can hear Sean breathing in his ear. There is a prick against his hand, and Viggo looks down to notice, half-surprised, that he's clenching tightly to a handful of sand.

“Did I wake you?” Sean asks

“No,” Viggo says, and it will be so easy to stop there. But like his hand, his mouth seems to have grown a mind of its own. “I'm on the beach.”

Sean laughs quietly, “You're not wearing any shoes, are you?”

Viggo gasps. He wants to laugh, wants so badly to, but he can only choke out half a sob, a stifled little thing. He pressed his hand against his mouth and tastes sand and salt, and it is almost too much because just a day ago all he tasted was Sean. There is salt there too, but it's different, different in a way all the words he knows will never be able to describe. Can salt be sweet?

“No. I'm not.” He looks out to the sea again. “I heard you say that,” he whispers, so careful with every breath because suddenly he is afraid that any louder sound will break this fragile connection between them, held together by the machines they hold in their hands.

“I heard you in the wind.”

There are no words from Sean in reply, no easy laughter, no bumping of shoulders as Sean smiles and calls him a daft bugger. The sand escapes his hands as he reaches out, but there is nothing there except for the newly-birthed boundary between sea and sky. The light of the sun spreads out, but the winds are still cold. Viggo doesn’t have his jacket, and he shivers.

“Vig, I'm-”

“Don't apologise for leaving,” the words burst out of Viggo's mouth, their shapes sharp and heavy like mountain pebbles in his mouth. “Don't.”

“I'm not going to. Magic is only magical if it's temporary.” Sean chuckles, and the sound is a faded thing. “I think you told me that, sometime before.”

“Maybe. Blame me anyway.”

“I always do.”

Silence falls over them. Viggo falls over to his side, lets the salty sand kiss his skin. His toes dig into the rough near-stickiness. Reaching out his fingers, he lets them brush against the tide.

“The sun is coming up,” he says. “When you called, the sun starts to rise. The air is warming up, and it's almost but not quite like having you here, sitting next to me. The wind is full of your voice. I know you have to go, but 'have to' and 'almost' seem to be the cruelest of words.” He lets out a shuddering breath. “My words are running away from me and trapped in my throat at the same time.”

“It'll be okay,” Sean says. “You are the King, Viggo. You are my King, and upon your shoulders are the burdens of going on.” He makes a sound, muffled, and through the line Viggo thinks he can taste the tears that Sean swallows down. Or maybe those are his own tears.

“Boromir stays with Aragorn, in the shape of his vambraces,” Viggo says. “He will never forget, but a haunting memory means so little when compared to a living man.” He laughs shakily. “I wish the story could've been written so Boromir lives.”

“Aye, but he lives, even as a shadow. What's the word you have always used for him?”

“Lionheart,” Viggo says. “Lionheart.”

“There we go, he is a lion in Aragorn's heart. Continuously roaring and he will never shut up.”

“Or maybe a tiger, a tiger burning bright, flames that give warmth until the cold is chased away.” Viggo closes his eyes. The sun's light washes over the sea, turning black into oranges and reds and blues, and painting the world with a thousand tones.

“The king and his lion's heart. Keep it safe, eh?” Sean lets out a breath. The tide rushes in, and teases Viggo's toes. 

“He will, because it is the most precious thing he owns, and the lionheart keeps him warm.”

They aren't talking about Aragorn and Boromir anymore, but that doesn't matter. Like the sky and the sea just minutes before, the boundaries between actor and character has never been particularly clear, not with the two of them. When Aragorn takes Boromir's vambraces as a sign of a promise, Viggo takes the thin-bordered pieces of Sean's heart with its burning heat inside and places it in his chest.

Slowly, he sits up. He picks up the phone, smearing the back with sand, and places it between his ear and his shoulder. Sean’s breathing vibrates in his ear as he takes up his camera. The viewfinder closes up the sunrise and the colours, and Viggo presses a button.

“I’m taking a photograph of the sunrise,” he tells Sean. The metal of the camera is warm from the flash, but that is not the heat that now chases the cold away.

“I think, though, that I took a photograph of you.”

“Maybe it is,” Sean says. “Were you aiming the camera towards Hong Kong?”

“Probably. Does it matter?”

“Nah, I don’t think so.”

Viggo raised his camera and took a photograph, and another, and another. The sunrise looks strange through the viewfinder with his head tilted at his angle, but that is alright. This is Sean’s sunrise, so it is different from any others that he has ever taken. There is a certain sort of music, he thinks, about Sean and his breathing mixed with the clicking of the shutter.

A peaceful music.

“I have to go,” Sean says, and it is a jarring chord, like all ten fingers slamming down on piano keys. “Gate’s open for my flight.”

Slowly, Viggo bends and places the camera on the sand.

“You’re going home,” he says.

In his heart, Viggo feels another few grains of sand fall into the vast emptiness that had taken all the other grains before, the great void that makes him shiver slightly.

He hears Sean take a long breath.

“My lion’s heart will be with you, my King.”

Viggo closes his eyes. The light has invaded through the darkness here too, for there are white spots that he cannot capture, but which light him up and warm him somehow.

“A lion’s heart is only half as good as the lion himself,” he says with his eyes still closed. He will not see Sean leaving again even if he opens them, but once is more than enough.

“Next time,” Sean says. “Next time, you come to me.”

In his heart, the hourglass turns. Sand falls in reverse, and his chest fills up with a lion’s fire, and his ears ring with roars. He swallows, and there is no salt on his tongue.

“Next time.”

_End_


End file.
